Towards end the end of last year, IBM bowed to pressure and embraced Cloud
Computing by offering Cloud
validation services. Even though it was not very significant from the
technology perspective, it was very important from a strategic point of view. It
was a move that was supposed to make enterprises comfortable towards Cloud
Computing.

Today, IBM announced that they are releasing their Lotus line of products on
the Clouds. Named Lotus
Live, the service offers email, collaboration and conferencing services. It
is a move that will put IBM against Microsoft’s exchange services. This suite of
services will help people work from outside of their corporate firewall, connect
with companies that are part of your business strategy, etc..

How is this significant? Again, from a technology perspective, it is not
ground shattering but it is important from a strategic perspective. There are
many startups that offers services similar to what IBM is offering with
its Lotus Live services but they are having trouble convincing enterprise
customers to adapt them in their business workflow. This is where the companies
like IBM and Microsoft can play a role helping enterprises break open their old
fashioned mindset and move to Clouds. In this way, this news is significant but
I also hope that these big companies do more than what they are doing right
now.

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Director, OpenShift Strategy at Red Hat. Founder of Rishidot Research, a research community focused on services world. His focus is on Platform Services, Infrastructure and the role of Open Source in the services era. Krish has been writing @ CloudAve from its inception and had also been part of GigaOm Pro Analyst Group. The opinions expressed here are his own and are neither representative of his employer, Red Hat, nor CloudAve, nor its sponsors.